(1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to novel interferon alphas, namely interferon .alpha.S51B10 and interferon .alpha.S17H9. Further, it relates to DNA sequence and recombinant plasmid enabling an expression of these interferons and a microorganism transformed by the plasmid. The above interferon alphas each has antiviral and antitumor activity and is therefore utilized as a medicine for human and animal.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
Human interferon (hereinafter referred to as IFN) has .alpha., .beta., and .gamma. type, all of which are (glyco)proteins having antiviral activity and other broad physiological activities (W. E. Stewart II: The IFN System, Springer-Verlag, New York-Wien 1979).
It is well known that especially IFN.alpha. has many subtypes (S. Pestka: Arch. Biochem. Biophys 221, 1-37 (1983); C. Weissmann et al: Interferon, UCLA Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology 25, 295-326 (1982), Academic Press), and their antiviral, anti-cell proliferation and NK-activating activities are fairly different from each other's (E. Rehberg et al, J. Biol. Chem. 257, 11497 (1982)).
Leukocyte, Namalva cell, KG-1 cell and the like are recognized as producing a large amount of IFN.alpha.. From these cells mRNAs are extracted and the genes encoding sutypes of IFN.alpha. are isolated through cDNA cloning. However, the proportion of the amount of the subtypes containing is different in the each cell (I. Hiscott et al, Nucl. Acids. Res. 12, 3727-3746 (1984)).
Miyoshi et al found that BALL-1 cell isolated from leukemia leukocyte (I. Miyoshi et al, Nature 267, 843-844 (1977)) produces a lot of IFN.alpha. (Miyoshi et al, Progress in medicine (Igaku no ayumi) 113, 15-16 (1980)).